The Lucasville Uprising was a rebellion against oppressive and racist policies at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility (SOCF) in Lucasville, OH. Nine inmates and one guard died during the uprising in April of 1993. Today, many people are serving time or condemned to death by the state of Ohio in relation to the uprising. We demand amnesty for all of these inmates. The conditions at SOCF were (and still are) intolerable and unconscionable.

Representation
on behalf of the five Lucasville defendants condemned to death has been
frustrated by the prosecution’s unwillingness to turn over to lawyers for the
defense the records of its own interviews with potential witnesses.Finally, during the winter of 2011-2012,
lawyers for four of the five capital defendants won the right to see summaries
and transcripts of investigators’ interviews (for the most part conducted by
officers of the Ohio State Highway Patrol) with Lucasville prisoners.The labor of collecting and evaluating this
material has barely begun.

What this, and the
several following essays, will report is what can be concluded at this time as
to each of the ten murders and the case against each of the five capital
defendants.

The Death Squad

All
the murders during the eleven days were horrific, inasmuch as they were to some
degree premeditated, and were carried out against unarmed and helpless victims.

But the murders in the very first
hours of the disturbance on the afternoon of Sunday, April 11, are among the
most troubling.A group of prisoners
that came to be known as the “death squad” went from cell to cell in L-6,
dragged individual prisoners from their cells, injuredsomeof them, and killed five:Darrell
Depina, Franklin Farrell, Albert Staiano, William Svette, and Bruce Vitale.

These
homicides are also among the most puzzling.L-6 was a block in which many Sunni Muslims were confined at the time of
the rebellion.During the rebellion it
was used to house hostage officers, who were blindfolded and initially placed
in one of the L-6 showers.Prisoners
guarded the officers to make sure they were not harmed.

L-6 was also used
to house a number of individual prisoners who were suspected of being
“snitches” for the SOCF administration.Amid the chaos of the first moments of the uprising, Muslim leaders
directed that several of these potential victims shouldbe locked in individual cells for their own
protection.

Under the circumstances,
these arrangements were relatively farsighted and humane.The puzzle is how a situation that appears to
have been initially intended to protect life came to be transformed into a
situation that made the vulnerable suspects easy targets for their killers.

A prisoner named
James Edinburgh (or, in some records, Edinbaugh) celled in L-3, directly across
the corridor from L-6.He described to
the Highway Patrol how some of the eventual victims of the death squad were chosen.He said that after the uprising began, he and
other prisoners were ordered by insurgents to move out of their cells into the
L-corridor.He sat there, with Depina
and Vitale nearby.Three prisoners, whom
he named (and who did not include LaMar), came out of L-6 into the corridor of
L-block and ordered Depina and Vitale inside.Interview #1105, Tape #A-168, conducted by Trooper Fleming on December
2, 1993.

The next question,
of course, is what happened in L-6 after the men were locked up there?

Keith LaMar (Bomani Shakur)

The
prosecution decided that the death squad had been coordinated by Keith LaMar
(Exhibit 1).LaMar was indicted for
several aggravated murders in the summer of 1994, went on trial in June 1995,
was found guilty, and sentenced to death.As he went through this ordeal, he decided to adopt the name Bomani
Shakur, Swahili for “thankful, mighty warrior.”

LaMar has
written a booklet about his experience entitled Condemned.In it he tells us that on April 11, 1993,
he “was 23 years old, serving my fourth year on an 18 year-life sentence for
murder.”When he woke up that morning in
his cell in L-6, LaMar continues, he had no idea that the Muslims were having
problems with the administration about the proposed method of testing for TB,
and were planning a protest.Around
12:30 p.m., LaMar joined three or four hundred other prisoners in the
recreation yard.He spent the next
couple of hours jogging.

About 2:45
p.m., “the warning alarm sounded to alert us that it was time to start lining
up to reenter the building.”As LaMar
waited in line, a correctional officer came running out of the building with
blood streaming down his face, followed by a masked prisoner screaming, “We
taking over!”A few minutes later,
several more masked prisoners appeared on the yard and announced that L-block
was now under their control.

Like many
other prisoners on the rec yard, LaMar was worried whether his personal
property was secure.He decided to go
back into L-block and check on it.When
he reached his cell he found that it was being used to hold an “inmate
hostage.”

Impulsively, he says,

I ran up to the control
panel with intentions of releasing this individual from my cell, and not really
understanding how to operate the panel, inadvertently opened several of the
adjoining cells which were also being used as holding cells.Seeing this, the individual previously
operating the panel screamed to me to leave the pod, and I was escorted out to
speak with one of the leaders who very briefly explained what was going
on.I was then given two options, to
leave or to stay and join the rebellion.I chose to leave.I was back on
the yard by 3:30 p.m. . . .

For all
of the above, see LaMar’s book, Condemned, pp. 15-20.

LaMar writes that he was indicted for leading the death
squad only after the prosecution had begun to determine which prisoners were
prepared to become informants and had assembled many of them at the Oakwood
Correctional Institution, which became known as the “Snitch Academy.”

Emanuel
Newell was a prisoner who was very nearly killed at the end of the uprising by
other prisoners and for that reason cannot be viewed as biased in favor of the
insurgents.Newell has described life
for the potential prosecution witnesses at Oakwood.Cell doors were left open.Commissary items were available in abundance
as were special meals.Agreeing with
Newell, prisoner Anthony Walker stated in a deposition that prospective
witnesses at Oakwood got all the cigarettes they wanted and that their doors
were never locked.Deposition of Anthony
Walker, Feb. 3, 2006, LaMar v. Warden, Civ. No 1:04CV00541 (U.S.D.Ct.,
S.D.Ohio).

Newell also
stated under oath that prisoners at Oakwood were encouraged to coordinate their
narratives and, on occasion, prosecutors instructed witnesses what they were to
say.For instance, according to Newell,
if a potential witness at the Snitch Academy described perpetrators who wore
masks, “We were advised that because the prosecutors required specific visual
identification” we should say that the accused did not wear masks and,
moreover, that it was the accused who committed the crimes about which the
witness was being questioned.Affidavit
of Emanuel Newell, June 4, 2007, paragraphs 6-10.

The prisoner informants at the Snitch Academy did not
include the two most important prosecution witnesses against Keith LaMar:Lewis Jones and Stacey Gordon.Jones and Gordon, like key prosecution
witnesses in other Lucasville trials (Anthony Lavelle, Rodger Snodgrass,
Kenneth Law and Robert Brookover), were “prepared” for trial individually.As we will see, Jones appears to have
invented the bizarre theory used by prosecutors to explain LaMar’s alleged
behavior.As for Gordon, he may have
been the actual foreman of the death squad.

Lewis Jones

On July 27, 1993, Troopers Long and McLemore, as well
as Lieutenant James Root of the Highway Patrol Investigative Team, interviewed
prisoner Lewis Jones at the Lorain Correctional Institution.Jones’ wife, Kim Jones, and his lawyer, Joel
Feld, were also present.

Jones
claimed that, after the disruption began, he was one of a group of prisoners in
the L-block corridor who wanted to go out to the rec yard, but were prevented
from doing so by Muslims guarding the door.According to Jones, the group came up with the idea that if they killed
several of the prisoners who had been locked up in L-6 as possible snitches,
they would then be permitted to leave L-block.

This theory is hard to take seriously.Homicide, even if “only” killing another
prisoner in the midst of a prison rebellion, is very likely greatly to extend a
perpetrator’s time behind bars and to cause the perpetrator to be segregated
from general population for years.Most
of the prisoners who stayed in L-block when the uprising began did not become
active participants in the insurgency.Their aim was simply to survive it.Often they sat and slept in the corridor near one or two particular
friends, eating and drinking what was available like everyone else, and coping
as best they could with the absence of electric light and water.Why would such a person jeopardize
hard-earned prison time by indiscriminate murder?

Besides
propounding this unlikely explanation for the genesis of the death squad, Jones
was one of a very few Lucasville prisoners who confessed to having been a death
squad member.

Here is
Jones’ own account on the stand in LaMar’s trial, Tr. at 406-407.

Q. How
did it come to be that you ended up in L6?

A. Well,
group of inmates that I were with were talking amongst Muslims with the
bullhorn and questions were asked as if we going to L6 and kill all the
snitches, can we be let out to the yard . . . .

Q.All right.And so what’s the next thing that happened or the next thing that took
place?

A.Well,
authorization was given to the guy with the bullhorn and it was transferred
back to the guy that was with us who asked the question . . . to the guy.

Q.And what
resulted as a result of those verbal exchanges, what took place, where did you
go, what took place next?

A.Proceeded into
L2 block.

Q.All right.What did you do in L2?

A.This was
particularly where guys were masked up, grabbed weapons and different things of
that nature.

Q.What kind of
weapons were grabbed?

A.Shovels, bats,
weight bars.

Q.What did you
have?

A.Weight bar.

In the trial of another
alleged member of the death squad, Derek Cannon, Jones testified that he had
struck Bruce Vitale six or seven times with the weight bar.

After he
agreed to be a prosecution witness, Lewis Jones was never indicted for
anything.

Stacey Gordon

Stacey Gordon was a tall African American and, like
Keith LaMar, a boxer.He had been
convicted of Aggravated Burglary in the Summit County Court of Common Pleas in
October 1989.After the April 1993
uprising, he was indicted in March 1994 for Attempted Murder of prisoner Johnny
Fryman, and Felonious Assault on Correctional Officers Conrad Nageland Kenneth Daniels.By his own admission he was also involved in
the murder of prisoner Bruce Harris on the last day of the uprising.

About three
months before the Lucasville disturbance, Gordon had become a Muslim.Not long after the disturbance, in the
context of plea negotiations with the State and supposedly for religious
reasons, Gordon abandoned the Islamic faith.

Once
immunized by his plea agreement, Gordon made some extraordinary
admissions.

Gordon was
one of three Muslims who planned the takeover of L-block.State v. Grinnell, Tr. at 328.

Gordon was
one of three “security amirs”—that is, security commanders or officers--for the
Muslims involved in the April 1993 uprising, with special responsibility for
security in L-6.(Gordon could have been
convicted for complicity in the kidnapping of every officer held in L-6.)He claimed to be the righthand man of Imam
Carlos Sanders.Id. at 327,
330-331, 343.

Sanders
directed Gordon to make sure that prisoners did not assault other
prisoners.Sanders didn’t want anyone
harmed.Id. at 357-358, 361, 378,

Gordon was inside L-6 at the time of the death squad
murders.Id. at 318, 365.He saw and heard the homicides.Id. at 321-324, 367.

As Gordon understood it, the L-6 cells in which
“snitches” were confined were not to be opened to let other prisoners come in
and kill those people.Id. at
372.

Gordon did nothing to prevent the killing of supposed snitches
in L-6 as the murders were being carried out.Id. at 370, 374.

In addition to his own admissions, the statements of
several other prisoners point to Gordon as the man who may have engineered the
death-squad massacre.In the habeas
appeal of the related case of State v. Farocq a.k.a. Grinnell v. Russell, Case
No. C-2-97-838,to the United States District Court, Southern District
of Ohio, Judge Algenon Marbley summarized as follows the relevant testimony of
prisoners Prentice Jackson and Leroy Elmore.Both men testified that Stacey Gordon entered L-6 with the death squad
and directed the prisoners operating the L-6 console to open the doors of the
cells where inmate hostages were confined.

Prentice Jackson . . .
was housed in L-3.Approximately one and
one-half hours after the riot began, he was ordered by unidentified inmates to
go to L-6 to get food. . . .Shortly
after he entered L-6, a group of men, including Gordon, came to the door and
Jackson observed [Grinnell] tell the group they could not come in.Jackson testified that [Grinnell] was then
threatened by Gordon who ordered [Grinnell] to man the console.

Leroy Elmore, who was . .
. not housed in the L-Block, entered L-6 out of curiosity approximately twenty
minutes after the riot began.When he
looked into L-6, he saw Gordon ordering everybody out of the block and Girdy at
the control panel.He also saw Gordon
threaten [Grinnell] and tell him to work the control panel.He also observed masked people with weapons
go to the top of the range.

Opinion and Order, Farocq
v. Russell at 23-24, summarizing testimony at the trial of Timothy Grinnell
in the Court of Common Pleas, Tr. at 476-478 (Jackson), 521-523 (Elmore).

Significant testimony from other
prisoners corroborated the trial testimony of

Jackson
and Elmore.

Reginald Williams, a Muslim prisoner who testified for the prosecution,
told

Troopers
Brink and McGough of the Highway Patrol in Interview #867 on July 15,

1993,
that he had seen Stacey Gordon sitting at the L-6 console “letting these guys
out”

of the
cells.

In Interview #871 on July 20, 1993, Tony Taylor, one of the prisoners
suspected

of
snitching and locked up for his own protection, told the Highway Patrol that
Stacey

Gordonhad “come down the range” with the rest of the death squad.Taylor recognized

him
because Taylor celled in L6-16on the
bottom range and Gordon celled in L-6-57 on

the
bottom range, directly across from Taylor.Moreover, Taylor testified that Gordon

was not
wearing a mask.Gordon, according to
Taylor, “helped kill Vitale and Depina.”

(Taylor
also stated that Gordon was in L-6 on the morning of April 15 when Officer

Vallandingham
was killed and, in fact, was one of two men who went to the cell on the

upper
range where Vallandingham was being held andbrought him down to the shower,

where he
was murdered).

Prisoner Edward Julious produced an affidavit that was later filed by
Grinnell in a

second
effort to obtain a new trial:

A
prisoner named Stacey Gordon was assistant in charge of security for the Sunni
Muslim community on L side.A prisoner
named Timothy Grinnell for a time operated the console in L-6.

I heard the imam or prayer leader for the Muslim
community, Siddique Abdullah Hasan also known as Carlos Sanders, instruct Mr.
Grinnell that certain prisoners were to be locked up in L-6 for their own
protection and were not to be harmed.

I witnessed Mr. Gordon enter L-6 with a group of
prisoners.Mr. Gordon ordered Mr.
Grinnell to open the doors of the cells in which various prisoners were
confined whom Mr. Gordon described as “snitches.”

Mr. Grinnell refused.Mr. Gordon and his associates left L-6.While he was absent, a prisoner named Eric Girdy replaced Mr. Grinnell
at the console.

Mr. Gordon returned and ordered Mr. Girdy to open cell
doors.Mr. Girdy did so.A group that became known as the “death
squad” went from cell to cell, beating and killing the prisoners confined
there.

Affidavit
of Edward Julious, Apr. 17, 2008.

There were
additional problems with the theory that Keith LaMar coordinated the death
squad.Aaron Jefferson sent a message to
prosecutors admitting that it was he who had killed Darrell Depina, and that no
other person told him to do it.When he
made this confession, he was not even a suspect nor was he a friend of
LaMar.He was doing three-to-fifteen
years and had no reason to lie.Yet the
State failed to indict him.Perhaps this
was because Jefferson was a member of a group called the Black Gangster
Disciples, headed by Anthony Lavelle, and Lavelle had become a key prosecution
witness.

Forthermore,
there were conflicting accounts of the murder of another supposed victim of the
death squad, William Svette.Svette was
said to have been carried out to the L-corridor while he was still alive.There, according to witness testimony,
prisoner Freddie Frakes beat Svette to death.And the State indicted Frakes for murder.

What Did the Prosecution Do?

In summary,
a good deal of evidence points to prisoners other than Keith LaMar. and
especially to Stacey Gordon as the figure at the center of the death squad
massacre.Based on his own admissions
and the testimony of other prisoners, even if Gordon did not lead the death
squad from cell to cell, he was a principal planner of the uprising and it was
he who was responsible for safeguarding hostage prisoners as well as hostage
officers.The evidence suggests that
Gordon led the death squad to L-6; that after an initial rebuff he returned
with the death squad and was admitted; that he angrily told the men operating
the console to open the doors of the cells; and that he then looked on as the
members of the death squad did their bloody work.

Gordon was
not investigated and prosecuted.Instead, the following occurred.

First, on
September 8, 1994, the State dropped the most serious charges against Gordon,
reducing his sentence for conduct during the rebellion to three to five
years.(Exhibit 2.)

Next, that
same day Assistant Prosecutor Steve Tolbert took a statement from Gordon in the
Court of Common Pleas of Scioto County, transcribed by Court Reporter Deborah
S. Adkins.Tolbert asked Gordon if he
knew Keith LaMar.Gordon answered, No.Then Tolbert asked:“Did you see Keith LaMar in the L-6 block in
the early hours of the riot at Lucasville?”Gordon again answered, No.

Thereafter,
Gordon testified against LaMar and against the defendants in the other major
Lucasville trials.

Lastly,
Gordon was released from prison in 2007.

Why Didn’t Counsel for
LaMar Use This Information at Trial?

They didn’t use it because they didn’t have it.LaMar’s prosecutor, Seth Tieger, declined to
give defense counsel the transcripts of interviews conducted by the State with
more than forty men who had been in L-6 during the afternoon of April 11.Instead, Tieger proffered two separate lists
to the judge in the trial court.The
first list contained very brief summaries of the Highway Patrol interviews but
deleted the names of the prisoner who were interviewed.The second list contained the names of
forty-three prisoners who had been interviewed but not what they had said.It was left to LaMar’s lawyers to guess which
prisoner had said what.

Whether such withholding of information denied LaMar a
fair trial is the main issue in LaMar’s appeal to the Sixth Circuit Court of
Appeals in Cincinnati.